Christian Support Group Community Group
This is a place for everyone who loves Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior (or those who are seeking Him), to come and discuss important issues in their lives and find support from fellow believers in regards to their faith and life. We uphold the Bible and living a Christ-like life, not as a way to heaven, but as a reflection of our love for God.
(Col. 1.28)
As the second Adam, Christ came and wrought out a new nature for all the members of His body. This nature is His own life, perfected through suffering and obedience. In thus being perfected Himself, 'He perfected forever them that are sanctified.'
(Heb. 10.14)
His perfection, His perfect life, is ours. And that not only judicially, or by imputation, but as an actual spiritual reality, in virtue of our real and living union with Him.
Paul says in the same Epistle, “You are complete, made full in Him”; all that you are to be is already fulfilled, and so you are fulfilled in Him: circumcised in Him, buried with Him, raised with Him, quickened together with Him. All Christ’s members are in Him, fulfilled in Him.
(from "Be Perfect" by Andrew Murray)
However, I will not be allowing posts of this nature anymore. I am going to leave this up till you have seen it Walter, and then delete it. Please post about God, not about our walk with God, anymore. You are being deluded about what perfection means, because the Greek never says this! Telios means "complete, mature, end goal." It does not mean perfection in this lifetime.
Further, none of these posts actually exegete the Greek, and it uses KJV, which was a great translation in its time. However, it contains obscure words and grammar which is obsolete.
For example, what does the word "wrought" mean. For me, it has something to do with fancy iron work. Because that word is NOT in common usage. I have an MDiv, and an undergrad degree. I never studied Early Modern English, like most people, and I do not want to have a translation which uses words which are not in the vernacular, anymore! So cease and desist!
This post clearly states that if we are NOT perfect, by implication, we are not saved. This is not the progression of salvation. I have told you this over and over and over!
Justification - Romans 5:1 - God saves us positionally.
Sanctification - Romans 12:2 and 2 Cor. 3:18 - God is working on us, changing us into his image our whole lives. He is making us "holy." Hagios, in Greek, means saints or holy. That is a life long journey.
Glorification - 1 John 3:2, 1 Cor. 13:2 When we see Christ face to face, and he transforms us into our glorified and perfect selves.
Any post that you put up, regardless of how positive the content, will be pulled if you do not follow the theology which I have posted. Enough from Andrew Murray, too!
"For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Hebrews 10:4 NIV
First, this verse, like the rest of Hebrews, expounds that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for sin. It is about Jesus. It is not really about us, except for the fact that of course, the whole point of his sacrifice was for us.
μιᾷ γὰρ προσφορᾷ τετελείωκεν εἰς τὸ διηνεκὲς τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους. Hebrews 10:14
Second is the tense and voice of the verbs in Greek.
MADE PERFECT - τετελείωκεν - to complete, to perfect. Perfect Indicative Active, 3rd person singular. The perfect tense (the two t's or tau, separated by an e or epsilon at the beginning make this perfect, grammatically) indicates a one-time event with a continuing result, completed in the process by the following participle, which is "are being made holy."
ARE BEING MADE HOLY - ἁγιαζομένους - to sanctify - Present Passive Participle. This is the fact that the process is going on, we are 'being made holy" we are not "sanctified" past tense, game over! That would either be the imperfect or the Aorist tenses, which would use the suffix "ed" - santified, to imply it is already a completed process. The KJV got it really wrong here, and I constantly am reading people posting this false doctrine of perfectionism, especially based on this wrongly translated verse.
What is completed, is Jesus' life, death and resurrection. He died on the cross for our sins. It is a ONCE FOR ALL act, as the use of the perfect tense implies. Perfect means it was done completely in the past.
Whereas the participle ἁγιαζομένους has some interesting and important factors. It is in the PRESENT tense. This means that it is going on right now - it is not over and done with. Further, the passive tense, meaning "are being made" is means God does it to us. So God is walking along with us in the present, making us to be more holy.
This is what you get trying to be a theologian (Both the excerpt from Andrew Murray and you, Walter!), without knowing Greek. The Bible is inspired, but it is the original languages, not translations, that we need to rely on. Mistranslating the participle as a completed verb, past tense, is only one example of why we need to rely on the Greek for the New Testament, and certainly not the KJV, which relied on 7 very late manuscipts, which had grievous copyist errors in them. To say nothing of how much more scholars know and understand Koine Greek, in the case of the New Testament!